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Time Is Life, Are You Mastering or Wasting It?

You’ve got dreams for your future, goals, things that you want to see happen. Some of them are still alive and well in your mind, some of them are being worked on, some are tragically forgotten in the midst of time. For all those things we want to achieve but that just seem so far away we must ask ourselves, what’s holding us back? It’s time to face reality if we want to make a change.

How do I become the person I want to be? How do I achieve what I have envisioned? How do I make more of myself?

We ask all of the questions about what to do to make it happen, but we often overlook the equally important question of what NOT to do.

i.e. What do I need to stop/reduce in order to achieve my goals?

Here is what we believe is literally one of a few true “Key’s To Success” (please mind the cliché)…

This key is so easily forgotten. In a world that seems to be moving at 100 miles/hour we seldom stop to consider how little time we actually have and what portion we are actually allotting to our goal. Many of us make the vital mistake of never actually charting out our day in terms of time utilization.

It’s a critical mistake and usually comes with a steep penalty and many lost dreams. The good news is that as you’re reading this article you’ll learn the largest, simplest and most important first steps to understanding and mastering your time.

When I first did this analysis in my own life, the results came in as a shock. It took honesty and humility to grasp that although I was saying that something was important to me, I was actually spending very little time on it. In other words, it was just cheap talk. What upset me even more about my conflicting actions was the realization of how much more time I was dedicating to things that I felt were not at all important. It took looking at both items to really fuel a change in my life that I will never regret. The simple understanding and breakdown of time can also change the way you approach life and will provide a boost to your motivation to get you moving towards your dream.

Understanding Your Time & Opportunity:

We’ll keep this as simple as possible and encourage you to do your own math and analysis to demonstrate where your time is going and where your opportunity is.

To start, we have 24 hours in a day and from there we must look at allotments for necessary activities, or what we will refer to as “Fixed Time”.

1. The average American sleeps for 8.8 hours per day.

2. A man working full-time will put in an average of 8.43 hours per day.

3. We spend an average of 1.21 hours eating/drinking per day.

Total of Fixed Activity Time = 18.44 hours per day which leaves us with 5.56 hours of opportunity. We simply got this by taking 24 hours and subtracting sleep, work and eating/drinking.

In short, you have 5.56 hours per day to work on your goals and ambitions if you are a male, employed full time and eat.

The real shocker is looking at what we are doing with the five and half hours of Opportunity? Let’s look at our study again as a reference point:

The average American man will spend just over 3 hours (3.03) watching T.V every day. That means almost 55% of our Opportunity is going right into the television! Once we see the guys, spend time with our families, children, etc. there isn’t much time left to work on our goals and dreams.

Almost 55% of your Opportunity Time is going right into the television!

Step 1 In Mastering Time

This analysis was not done to demonstrate that watching T.V is bad or a complete waste, but it does go to show that if you have dreams and ambitions, they have to fit in your limited time slot, something has to give.

A good friend once commented while I was watching a match between two below average teams at the start of the season, it was one of the least entertaining matches I had watched in a while… my friend asked boldly: “Aren’t you tired of sitting down and watching other guys live out their dream?”. This was a harsh reality I had to come to terms with, one of the few moments of truth that helped change my life from something mediocre, towards truly striving towards my goals and ambitions for the first time.

This was a harsh reality I had to come to terms with, one of the few moments of truth that helped change my life from something mediocre, towards truly striving towards my goals and ambitions for the first time.

We need to analyze our time and most importantly we have to look at what we are giving our time to, and how those activities compare to what we say, think and feel are important activities to us and our families.

Share this post with friends and co-workers! Let us know how you spend your time and if you have mapped it out before.